Chapter Three
MARC
Iarrived fifteen minutes early to our monthly Ruby River town hall meeting, and I still wasn’t the first one there.
The folding chairs were already half full.
Metal legs scraped against the old hardwood floor in uneven, unpredictable intervals that made my shoulders inch toward my ears.
Each scrape was like nails on a chalkboard, impossible to anticipate, impossible to ignore.
I chose an aisle seat near the back—left side, fourth row—close enough to see the podium and close enough to the exit if the sensory input became too much and I needed to leave.
The routine helped. Same seat. Same position. Same proximity. Predictable.
Penny rushed in behind me, nearly jogging as she beelined for the back table to lay out her baked goods.
To those of us attending, they were emergency supplies to get through the next hour or two.
Her voice pitched high and fast as she apologized to no one in particular.
The rise and fall of her tone tangled with other conversations already competing for dominance in the room.
Mrs. Fawcett’s jam jars clinked as her friend set them down too hard.
The Miller twins, Emma and Olivia, were arguing about scarf placement for their next craft show near the refreshment table, their voices overlapping in a way that made my brain feel staticky.
It was almost too much, and the meeting hadn’t started yet.
“Sorry,” Josh, my best friend, apologized as he dropped into the seat beside me with enough force to make the chair groan—which made me almost groan. “I got held up.”
“You're late,” I muttered, glancing at my watch. Three minutes past our agreed-upon time. “We said 6:45.”
“I arrived before the yelling,” he said. “That counts as on time.”
He shoulder bumped me—harder than necessary—and I winced, pulling away slightly.
Josh was built like a lumberjack on steroids with a protein shake addiction, neither of which were true.
He’d never fully accepted that not everyone else was built like a brick wall.
He only reinforced the stereotype when he opened Axe-Hole, the axe-throwing place attached to the bowling alley.
Josh was my buffer at events like this. My translator for the unspoken social rules I still struggled to navigate at thirty-two years old.
We’d been friends since kindergarten—the day another kid had decided my confusion about a group game was funny and Josh had decided that the kid would regret it.
He’d been stepping between me and the world’s more confusing parts ever since.
Movement near the door caught my attention.
Delaney.
She’d changed clothes since this morning, and she’d pulled her jet black hair up into a ponytail with the purple ends swinging with every movement.
Gone were the leggings and sweater. Now she wore flowy pants that shifted when she walked and a cropped top that showed a sliver of golden-tan skin when she lifted her arms to wave at someone across the room.
My brain stalled, the noise of the room fading to background static as I tracked her movement.
She maneuvered the space with this easy confidence, like she’d been a Ruby River resident her whole life instead of just the past three months.
Our eyes met.
Hers narrowed immediately, expression shifting from neutral to hostile in the span of a heartbeat before she deliberately looked away.
Delaney sat down in the open chair between Cheryl and Adele, who’d taken over her parents’ bookstore, and had known Delaney since they were kids.
It also didn’t escape my attention that those seats were as far away from me as physically possible while still being in the same building.
My chest tightened. My ribs suddenly felt too small for my lungs to expand.
“Don’t be so obvious,” Josh said loudly enough to make me jump.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I pulled my gaze away, forcing myself to look at the podium instead.
He snorted, the sound derisive. “You stare at her like a stalker. Like you’re cataloging her for some kind of weird science experiment.”
“I do not,” I grumbled, heat crawling up the back of my neck.
“Bro,” he said, lowering his voice to something approximating discretion, “if she turns around right now and catches you staring, she’s calling the cops. And I’ll be asked to be a witness for the prosecution.”
“I wouldn’t be interested in someone who hates me,” I muttered, which was true. Logically true. Except my traitorous brain apparently hadn’t received that message and continued to notice things like the way her hair caught the overhead lights and how her laugh soothed a part of me.
“Right,” Josh drawled. “That sounded convincing.”
Damn shit-stirrer.
The crack of Everly Grant’s gavel cut through the room like a gunshot.
I flinched, my whole body jerking.
No one else reacted.
She banged it again for emphasis.
Still nothing. People just kept talking, like the sharp sound hadn’t just ricocheted through my skull.
“That thing’s decorative, Everly,” Reggie Jones shouted from the middle section. He was one of our oldest residents, probably in his nineties, and treated the town meeting like it was his personal comedy show.
“So are you, Reggie,” Anita Macguire snapped from the front row, not even bothering to turn around. She and Reggie had been nemeses for as long as I could remember, something about a broken engagement between the two, according to town whispers.
Laughter rippled through the room—too piercing, too sudden, too loud.
My heart rate jumped, adrenaline spiking for no good reason.
I counted my breaths the way my therapist had taught me.
In for eight. Out for eight. The overhead lights buzzed with that fluorescent hum that most people couldn’t hear.
Someone’s bag crinkled. A chair scraped.
Old Man Jenkins muttered something I couldn’t quite catch as the microphone squealed when Everly spoke into it.
I fumbled in my pocket for my noise-reducing earbuds and slipped them in quickly. The world softened immediately, edges blurred, and the volume dropped to somewhat survivable. Not silent—I could still hear—but manageable.
“As mayor of Ruby River,” Everly spoke firmly into the microphone, which immediately let out a high-pitched squeal of feedback.
I cringed, grateful for the earbuds dampening the worst of it.
“Dream come true if she learned how to hold a microphone without killing us all,” Jenkins muttered loudly. It was the same complaint he made at every meeting and event. You could set your watch by it.
Everly adjusted her grip, and the squealing stopped. “I now call this meeting to order.”
“Do we need to second that?” Jude called out.
He’d owned the hardware store until last year when he retired and handed it over to his granddaughter.
He asked the same question at every single meeting, like he’d forgotten the answer every time.
This meeting and its residents were nothing if not predictable.
“No!” several voices answered at once, clearly as tired of the routine as I was.
“He asks the same question every damn time,”Josh groaned beside me, echoing my thoughts.
Everly gave Jude a patient smile that appeared slightly strained around the edges. She deserved hazard pay for running these things. “No, Jude. We don’t.”
My sister Grace suddenly appeared in the seat behind us, shoving chips into her mouth with unapologetic crunching and bag crinkling that I could hear even through my earbuds.
I winced at the sound and tried not to physically react.
“What did I miss?” she asked around a mouthful, sending me an apologetic look. “I didn’t have time for dinner.”
“Nothing except for Jude being Jude,” Josh responded, leaning back in his chair. “Hey, what’re you eating?”
“Nothing for you.” Grace grinned, deliberately putting another chip in her mouth.
Josh scowled. “I hope your future boyfriend steals all of your chips.”
Grace cackled, the sound bright and full of joy. “Bold of you to assume I’d date someone who hates my favorite food group.”
Josh opened his mouth, closed it, then glared at her and mumbled something about annoying people under his breath.
I didn’t miss the way his eyes tracked her when she wasn’t looking, or how his jaw tightened when she laughed. Interesting.
Penny appeared beside us with a plate, tapping my shoulder gently—she’d learned years ago not to startle me—and handed Josh and me cookies. “Snickerdoodles?”
Josh moaned. “This is why I’d marry you, Penny.”
“Penny could do way better,” Grace said sweetly, popping another chip in her mouth.
Everly shot us a glare. We shut up immediately.
The double doors swung open with a dramatic flourish.
Glamma entered with Martha, Gladys, and Goldie.
They were late on purpose. If she could’ve arranged dramatic lighting and a convenient breeze, I was certain she would have.
She’d probably tried. I wouldn’t be shocked to know she was trying to work things out with the high school drama department to scale up her entrances.
“So sorry we’re late,” she announced, not sounding sorry at all. They claimed the front row seats that no one ever dared to occupy. Those were Glamma’s seats, had been for decades, and would be until the day she died. Possibly after. They’d probably put a sign on her seat as a memorial.
My mother must have slipped in at some point because I spotted her and Dad sitting in the row behind Grace. Dad was shifting uncomfortably in his seat—he’d probably knocked over his water bottle on the way here. It happened more often than he liked.
Everly plowed ahead. “Main Street parking—”
“I object!” Jude’s hand shot up.
“She didn’t even finish her sentence,” Maddox called from the near back. He’d taken over his uncle’s bar about a year ago and had opinions about everything. “Besides, you don’t even own a business anymore.”